The Week That Never Ended

The last week and a half, continued from the last post, was the most interesting I've had so far in the Navy, as pertains to my job. Every day we had to stay late, as in 19 or 2000, the First Classes were always working on getting the power-point brief put together... initially, and then fine-tuning it as we went.

I was very pleased with my watch team (the division was split up into two teams, blue and gold; I was gold); we worked rather well together and got our job done, when the system behaved. :) My friend, STG2, did a bunch of extra work, I think it was Wednesday or Thursday, rebooting some of our computers and bringing a vital system back online. I helped her, and watched her, trying to take in as much as I could. The class I went to for being a technician had a lot to do with finding things in the tech doc, but had hardly anything to do with understanding how to troubleshoot computer systems... which is the majority of what we do as techs.

On my duty day this week (Wednesday the 15th), we were also conducting checks with some tech assist guys... and I did the underway check on the fatho. We replaced the bulbs in the door, and found out that one of the fuses was out of spec. He wouldn't continue the check until we had the right one, but that I couldn't find anywhere... not even with three other divisions or the electronics officer. Since we needed to get this checked off our list, I volunteered to go get one out in town. I tried the obvious first, Auto Zone, Radio Shack, O'Riley Auto, but they didn't have one small enough. O'Riley was helpful though and directed me to Audio One a couple miles down the street. They didn't have it, but directed me to the people who did... 4.5 miles away. It took me an hour to do it, but I came back with a little pack of the right fuses. After lunch, we finished the check and all was well.

My only watch consisted of a 5 hour stint in the Combat Systems Maintenance Central, to keep an eye on the alarm panel and let the right people know if something went off. Afterwords, I stayed up and did the dailies before crashing for a couple hours (0300 to 0530) in Sonar 1 because I was too lazy to want to change in and out of my uniform. My team rolled right into a two-hour scenario, waited through the next one, and then did the final two-hour scenario after lunch. I was wiped out! But just as people were getting ready for the debrief, I was told that our consumables had come in and LS1 was waiting for me on the pier. I went right outside, still in my fleece from being in Sonar Control all day, and walked into a brilliant sunlit, warm afternoon. The fleece came off and a bunch of supplies came in... we ordered some cleaning stuff (like new brooms! and a mop caddie!) that everyone was excited about.

Friday was the final day of our exercise, and it didn't involve me at all. So after getting their early to help set up the system and listen to the final brief, I made myself useful after that by taking out some of the trash. First I worked on getting the dead console batteries (that we replaced underway) recycled at the site on base. It's a bit of an operation getting them there... they weigh 35 pounds each; with one in each hand, a person gets tired pretty quick. Took them up the one ladder to the deck one at a time, then leaned back as I walked down the 15-foot ladder to the pier with both in my hands. I dropped them off at the end of the pier (with permission) and drove my car over to pick them up (I was parked a ways away). From then on it was easy!

Came back to find that the chairs we ordered for the division had arrived, so I picked up one box and carried it all the way to sonar (Master Chief helped me for the last bit of the ways... she is so helpful!). The guys managed to get the other three inside while I set to work assembling them. The assessors were pretty surprised to come back after lunch and find plenty of places to sit down! That's what I call good timing!

We were finally let go at 1345... so I guess it only felt like it would never end.